A blog about life with my daughter Karly, who is living with spina bifida. In spite of her condition, she lives life to the fullest and is the most joyful person I know. I am blessed to have her in my life!

Friday, March 30, 2012

Karly is having surgery right now, in her very favorite hospital. She is so confident with her amazing doctor and everyone here at the Levine Children's Hospital (part of Carolina Medical Center in Charlotte), that she went into surgery with excitement and a big smile on her face. She actually told me, "I don't even need you to come with me mom, if you think you need to stay home with the puppy. No one at LCH has ever hurt me". We have been so pleased to find out that it is possible to have good AND compassionate care from every single person we come into contact with! LCH does a GREAT job with this. At our 'home' hospital, we are very blessed that we have a number of fabulous nurses and one especially amazing nephrologist (kidney doctor), but we have had a fair amount of very stressful and difficult situations as well. Comparatively, it feels like a vacation coming here and is certainly worth every minute of the 1.5 hour drive to get here. And the payoff is a happy, confident child who will recover much more quickly from a major surgical procedure.

In August, Karly had a 'minor' procedure to narrow her ureter and prevent reflux of old urine into her kidney (the original cause of her kidney failure). Unfortunately, this over-narrowed the ureter and, with stents and other interventions to gain the correct size, the ureter shut down and lost some of its blood supply over about a 4 inch section. Today, her urologist, along with a transplant surgeon he trusts (who was also great to talk with this morning) are attempting to re-connect her transplanted kidney so she has a clear pathway to her bladder. We feel very good about this team and she is so looking forward to getting rid of the nephtube that has been the only outlet from her kidney for 5 months! Good luck, Karly (the bravest girl I know!).